Open Letter to Anne Fox and Mass Citizens for Life Asking Them to Withdraw Howie Carr Invitation

-----Original Message-----
From: cmmckinley@aol.com
To: Anne Fox, Officers & Directors of MCFL
Sent: Sun, Dec 19, 2010 11:20 am
Subject: Please Withdraw Invitation to Howie Carr


+
IHS

Dear Anne,

I'm writing to request the invitation to Howie Carr as a featured speaker at the Assembly for Life be withdrawn.

Howie Carr is a political media personality that can be entertaining but he is not a pro-lifer. Whatever positions he holds that seem to be common ground are not common ground with a Catholic pro-life organization. His opposition to Obamacare is not grounded in the sanctity of life, it is fiscal and big government related opposition. Though we can chum around with him at the Harvard Club and laugh at his moonbat jokes, he does not belong as the featured speaker at the Assembly of Life.

More importantly, Howie Carr is vulgar and vile critic of the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord. The Sacrament and price of our the salvation of our souls is regularly cheapened and spat upon. I was told that as recently as the past few weeks, he proclaimed that "90% of of Catholic priests are pedophiles".

I vehemently object to and am outraged by this invitation and will be taking an active role in lobbying others to request that you withdraw this invitation. If you fail to immediately do so, I will be lobbying our Catholic priests, high-ranking leaders to boycott the event.

The mission of Mass Citizens for Life is a "pro-life" organization whose members and supporters are Catholics who politically organize to have their convictions represented in the various processes of defining civil and constitutional law.

Somewhere along the way, it capitulated to a political organization that identifies with and endorses pro-choice politicians. It tumbled from the primary mission of getting candidates who oppose Roe v. Wade on the ballot and getting out the ground troops to get them elected, to finding common ground with prochoice candidates on ancillary issues and re-characterizing their support of Roe v. Wade as acceptable enough to get a pro-life endorsement from the major Catholic pro-life political machine in Massachusetts.

I am sorry to say, this Howie Carr invitation is adding fuel to the overall impression that MCFL's trajectory is furthering itself as a Catholic political organization and becoming a political shill for fiscal conservatives who wish to use it as a tool.

St. Joseph, chaste guardian of the Virgin, protector of The Holy Church, pray for us.

Carol McKinley



-----Original Message-----
From: calmdoyle@aol.com
Sent: Fri, Dec 17, 2010 2:12 pm
Subject: CATHOLIC ACTION LEAGUE LETTER TO MCFL




December 17, 2010

Anne Fox, President
Massachusetts Citizens For Life
The Schrafft Center
529 Main Street
Charlestown, MA 02129


Dear Anne,

We were astonished to learn that Howie Carr will be featured at MCFL's Annual Assembly For Life on January 16th. Carr is a notorious Catholic-basher with a long record of vicious and gratuitous attacks on the Catholic Religion.

On April 8, 1998 --- Wednesday in Holy Week --- in response to a decision by the Red Sox to forgo alcohol sales in Fenway Park because Opening Day would fall on Good Friday, Carr hosted a segment on his program in which he invited listeners to comment on selling "Catholic Eucharists for $3.49 a bag" as a substitute for beer. The result was a half hour of offensive slurs profaning the Blessed Sacrament.

In one particularly vile episode later in 1998, in a conversation between Carr and his producer Doug Goudie evidently intended to disparage Arabs, it was asserted that shepherds in the Middle East had unnatural relations with the animals in their flocks. Into this depraved subject the name of Saint Joseph --- the Virgin Spouse of the Virgin Mother of God --- was introduced. Saint Joseph was then misidentified as a shepherd.

In an interview with Malachy McCourt, Carr laughed and snickered over McCourt's assertion that the late Francis Cardinal Spellman was not only a homosexual but a pedophile. Carr went on to recount a story alleging that an episcopal ring was found by police in a homosexual brothel, implying that the ring belonged to Spellman.

In January, 2002, Carr hosted a segment in which he asked his listeners " Are you ashamed to be a Catholic?", during which he boasted that he never went to Mass. All throughout the molestation crisis of 2002, Carr contemptuously referred to the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston as "Bernie Law", and on November 29th of that year the Boston Herald published a column by Carr in which he described the Cardinal as "a Bulger bum kisser."

Hispanic Catholics, with their large families and culture of life, are the future of the Church and the Pro-Life movement in America. Howie Carr however, is not only an anti-Catholic but a crude nativist. One of the recurring themes of his program is the attempt to link illegal immigrants to crime. A particularly offensive gimmick is his habit of playing Mexican music while reading the names of criminal suspects with Hispanic surnames. This hostility to Hispanics and immigrants places Cardinal O'Malley, or whoever represents him from the Archdiocese of Boston, in the embarrassing position of sharing a stage with someone who boorishly castigates some of the neediest members of his flock.

In a Catholic community which has a significant number of Eastern Rite Catholics of Lebanese and Syrian descent (the Melkite Cathedral is in West Roxbury) it is unimaginable that MCFL would actually provide a platform to a rabble rousing shock jock who has described Arabs in the past as "towelheads".

Inviting Howie Carr to address the Assembly for Life is an act of monumental ingratitude to elected officials who defended the right to life and came to the aid of MCFL in difficult times. Men such as William Bulger, Ray Flynn, Thomas Finneran, and the late Jim Craven have been the victims of vulgar insults, venomous denunciations, and malevolent diatribes by this spiteful demagogue.

A larger issue here is why an organization with a predominantly Christian membership would want to showcase a public figure whose life and career embody such a cynical negation of Christian values. Howie Carr is infamous for his uncharitableness of speech, his lack of compassion, and his sneering contempt for the objects of his scorn. He preys upon the vulnerable, exploits the misfortunes of others, incites rancor and envy, and has grown rich by his indifference to the Eighth Commandment. He mocks the Church, derides the poor, maligns men who have more integrity than he does, and has ridiculed the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist.

Inviting such a miserable creature to address an organization dedicated to the sanctity and dignity of human life is an affront to the Christian religion and everything the Pro-Life movement professes to uphold.

We urge you to reconsider this improvident decision and cancel the invitation to this inappropriate choice for a speaker.

Sincerely,

Daniel T. Flatley C. J. Doyle
Chairman Emeritus Executive Director

The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts